Tales of the City 06 - Sure of You

a bulky Samoan lady who smiled pathetically and held up a splinted forefinger. He offered his condolences, then got off at the seventh floor.
    In August’s waiting room the receptionist behind the glass restrained her smile enough to hide the braces he’d seen many times before. “Morning, Michael.”
    “Hi, Lacey.”
    “You’re early, aren’t you?”
    “I’ve got pentamidine at nine, but I was hoping August could take a look at something.”
    She nodded. “He’s out till noon.”
    “Oh.”
    “He’s testifying in Sacramento.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “You know, funding…something like that. Joy is here. You wanna see her?”
    Joy was a nurse practitioner. “Sure. I guess. It’s just a place on my leg.”
    “O.K.” Another camouflaging smile. “Have a seat. She’ll be free in a little while.”
    He sat down, grabbed a copy of HG , and thumbed through it mechanically. One of the featured homes was Arch Gidde’s house at Sea Cliff, almost unrecognizable amid the jungle of exotic flora imported for the photograph. He checked the date of the magazine—two months back. The realtor must have been close to death when it hit the stands.
    “Hey,” said Lacey, “did you see where Jessica Hahn is making a video?”
    Michael managed a chuckle.
    “Is that disgusting or what?”
    “That’s pretty bad.”
    “They say she’s had a boob job.”
    “Chances are,” he said.
    He returned to his magazine and, feeling his palms begin to sweat, studied the lucite-framed cavalry uniforms in Arch Gidde’s bedroom.

    Five minutes later, Joy met him at the door and led him down a sunny hall lined with August’s collection of Broadway show posters.
    “By the way,” she said, “that was me who honked at you yesterday.”
    He drew a blank.
    “On Clement,” she explained. “You were leaving your nursery, I think.”
    “Oh, yeah.” He pretended to remember. At the moment he couldn’t focus on anything. Certainly not on yesterday.
    “I hate it when people honk at me and I can’t see who they are. It fucks up my whole day.”
    “I know what you mean,” he said.
    When they reached the examining room, she said: “What can I do for you?”
    He sat on the table and rolled up his pants leg. “Is that what I think it is?”
    She studied it in silence for a moment, then straightened up. “How long has it been there?”
    “I don’t know. I haven’t noticed it before.”
    “When did you find it?”
    “Last night.”
    She nodded.
    “Is it?”
    “It looks like it,” she said.
    He made himself take a deep breath.
    “I’m not a hundred percent certain.”
    He nodded.
    “August’ll be back at noon. He should look at it. We can take a biopsy.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Are you feeling O.K. otherwise?”
    “Fine.”
    “I’m not completely sure,” she said.
    “I understand.” He smiled faintly to show that he wouldn’t hold her to it.

    He loitered in the waiting room until nine, then went to the third-floor lab for his pentamidine. While he sucked away on the phallic plastic mouthpiece, the nurse who attended him carried on his usual monologue.
    “…so George went to this big, fancy gay and lesbian banquet in Washington, only the airlines lost his luggage with all his leather in it, and…well, you can imagine…he had to get up in front of everybody in wool pants and a white button-down shirt…”
    Michael smiled feebly under the mouthpiece.
    “He was totally upstaged by this S-and-M dyke, who made her entrance in a merry widow…with visible lash marks on her back. Is that a fashion statement or what?”
    Michael chuckled.
    “Are you O.K., guy?”
    “Yeah, fine.”
    “Am I talking too much? Just tell me, if I am.”
    “Not at all.”
    The vapor, as usual, left a bitter, tinfoilish taste in his mouth.

    He left the building just before ten and walked down the hill to the park, where he wandered amid people frolicking with Frisbees and dogs. Three years of daily fretting had left him overrehearsed for this moment, but it still seemed completely unreal. He had vowed not to rail against the universe when his time came. Too many people had died, too many he had loved, for “Why me?” to be a reasonable response. “Why not?” was more to the point.
    And there were lots worse things than KS. Pneumocystis, for one, which could finish you off in a matter of days. August had assured him the pentamidine would prevent that, if he did it faithfully. And KS had been known to disappear completely with the